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Do you have a burning question you just have to ask our Medical Board Experts about hypertensive pregnancies? Please email your question to expert@preeclampsia.org Keep in mind, however, that we won't be able to answer every question and our docs can't offer medical advice and won't be able to comment on specific medical cases.

Agree with xxx. Although a reasonable idea and worth pursuing as a topic for study there is little available data. This is an area for study rather than something to worry women or make them feel guilty about. I think the abstract only rasies the possibility that his might be relevant.

I do not think there is much doubt that stress can alter markers of inflammatory activation. In baboons, stress associated with animal transport results in a very high rate of pregnancy loss.

That said, we should be careful in attributing adverse pregnancy outcomes due to preeclampsia in human pregnancy to maternal stress without clear data. The association opens the door for women to blame themselves for having too much stress in their lives and therefore being responsible for their bad outcome. A number of us have tried to find cytokine markers that would serve as markers or predictors of preeclampsia - without much success. There are may be some statistical associations - but the overlap in data point is usually very large.

The abstract is very general in its content. I would certainly want to see more about study design and the robustness of the findings.

Stress is real and can lead to disease. It increases cytokines, oxidative stress, catecholamines and glucocorticoids. In general the most telling forms of stress are chronic, not acute but you can demonstrate increases in strokes and heart attacks after earthquakes etc.

On my way out of town and can't take time to polish, etc....stress doesn't cause preeclampsia, but it can raise a person's blood pressure. Blood pressure is one parameter of preeclampsia. Will be interesting to study patients with stress once we have a good biomarker for the disease rather than a sign.